Taliban threatens to kidnap and kill Prince Harry in Afghanistan

KABUL — The Afghan Taliban said on Monday they were doing everything in their power to try to kidnap or assassinate Britain’s Prince Harry, who arrived in Afghanistan last week to fly attack helicopters.

Queen Elizabeth’s grandson is in Afghanistan on a four-month tour, based out of Camp Bastion in the volatile Helmand province, where he will be on the front line in the NATO-led war against Taliban insurgents.

“We are using all our strength to get rid of him, either by killing or kidnapping,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

“We have informed our commanders in Helmand to do whatever they can to eliminate him,” Mujahid added, declining to go into detail on what he dubbed the “Harry operations.”

Britain’s Ministry of Defence declined to comment on Mujahid’s statement, and British authorities have given few details of Prince Harry’s stint in Afghanistan for security reasons.

The 27-year-old prince, who is third in line to the throne, took up his new role two weeks after being photographed frolicking naked in Las Vegas.

Known in the military as Captain Wales, he first served in Afghanistan in 2008 as an on-the-ground air controller, but his tour was cut short when a news blackout designed to protect him while he was on the front line collapsed.

With that, he became the first member of the British royal family to serve in a war zone since his uncle, Prince Andrew, flew as a helicopter pilot in the Falklands conflict with Argentina in 1982.